Islam: Empire of Faith (2000)

Robert A. Gardner

USA

163 min, color, English

A sanitized, heavy-handed, biased, and historically inaccurate documentary with some excellent re-enactments, beautiful photography, and engaging music, Islam: Empire of Faith falls far short of the promise of the PBS Empire series. This is an unfortunate saccharine look at Islam that achieves exactly the opposite of its intent by presenting a blatantly one-sided view of this religion and the empires it has inspired. It is all the more regrettable because the film is tastefully done, and is quite entertaining. The DVD also has a good "Making Of" featurette and a further look at Islamic architecture. The DVD presents the widescreen version of the film and, barring occasional artifacts and glitches, has a decent picture. But now on to the review.

One must be forgiven if he/she walks away from this film with an extremely distorted view of medieval history. In trying to celebrate all the worthy achievements of Islam and the Muslims, the film strays too far by constantly contrasting the glorious achievements of Islam with the squalor, barbarism, and stupidity of the Europeans who are said to have been languishing without street lights in the Dark Ages. I would leave aside the well-known but historically preposterous claim that the medieval period in Europe saw nothing but darkness and brutality. Even from a propaganda perspective, such heavy-handed brainwashing is counterproductive because it is so transparent.

As a Bulgarian, I have to take violent exception to the idiotic claim that the Ottoman Turks recruited the future janissaries in the Balkans. A bit of a background is in order. The Sultan, having correctly inferred that too often rogue generals and faithless troops were the undoing of dynasties, decided to create an elite army that would owe personal allegiance to him without regard to family, blood, social, or cultural ties. The solution was simple: get the boys while they are still children, separate them from their surroundings, train, educate, and indoctrinate them until they know nothing else but the life of a soldier relying entirely on the Sultan for everything. No wonder these janissaries were the best and most trusted troops of the empire.

As an idea, communal training was not new. Heck, even the Spartans practiced it. However, what was new was the method of obtaining the children. As the film mentions (because it can hardly avoid this particular fact), almost all janissaries were children of Christians, almost all of them from the Balkans. Now, the film somehow never mentions how it came to be that the Ottoman Turks ended up in the Balkans. In the 14th century, they conquered Bulgaria (very cruelly and at great cost, and also Serbia, Greece, and Hungary) and ruled until 1878, or roughly five centuries. They were never welcome rulers, but they did quell all insurrections with ruthless efficiency, and customarily made "examples" by wiping out entire villages. It is from this conquered people that the boys were "recruited" for their glorious service to the Sultan. But Bulgarians had another name for this: blood tax. The so-called recruitment consisted of troops raiding a village and snatching away all young boys whom the parents failed to hide in time. Often, this was accompanied by rape and murder. The most horrifying aspect of all this that the raiders themselves were janissaries.. that is, young Bulgarians who had no knowledge of who they were, ended up terrorizing their own. (A good glimpse of this process is the highly-acclaimed fictionalized account of the forceful conversion to Islam of one village in the Rhodope mountains. Although produced by the state for propaganda purposes, the film Time of Violence is based on a very popular novel and presents events fairly realistically. But one does not need modern fiction. Reading some of the folk poetry or listening to the traditional songs that have come down through the centuries gives a pretty detailed idea of the grisly truth.) While I am at it, let me say that the film makes absolutely no mention of Bulgaria whatsoever. I'd think that if it spent 10 minutes on Suleyman's conquest of the dinky island of Rhodes, it would at least mention the name of a country that spent five centuries under Ottoman rule. All the more important because (a) the Bulgarians helped Byzantium repel the first massive attack on Constantinople and saved the city from the Arabs; (b) the Russo-Turkish War that ended with the liberation of Bulgaria produced the divided Balkans after the Congress of Berlin that would ignite World War I, and (c) the recent horrific episodes on the Balkans have much to do with the legacy of Islam there.

But let's see some other problems with the film lest one says that I am biased against Islam by just being Bulgarian. (This, by the way, would be totally untrue for several reasons. First, if I were biased against anything, it would be the Ottoman Turks, not Islam, not Arabs. Second, I could not be biased against Ottoman Turks because they have nothing to do with present-day Turkey, and present-day Turks are all I know, and those I like a lot. It is incomprehensible to me that anyone could nurse a grudge that is over a century old.) Here are some straight or implied claims that even someone with a vague historical knowledge would catch:

Muslims were first to make good use of gunpowder. This is preposterous, especially given that even the film mentions that the knowledge was imported from China.
Janissaries were "recruited" from the Balkans. Can you say blood tax?
Mongols went from barbarism (piling skulls) to civilization (building mosques) within a decade of their conquest of Baghdad. Maybe, but they became civilized by the Chinese as well after the conquest there also. Without Islam.
Muslims tolerant of Christians. Maybe, but certainly not in the conquered European lands. One need only read some poetry from the period by these unlucky Christians to see it.
Muslims always gracious conquerors (in contrast to savage Crusaders, Mongols, and everyone else). Hahaha. Preposterous: brutality and leniency usually mark most conquering peoples at the same time.
Islam engine of progress. Maybe with respect to science, and that only early on. But what about its use to maintain backwardness and oppression of women later on? All religions share in this stupidity.
Vienna did not fall because the Ottoman Turks were defeated by the... mud. As ludicrous as claiming that the Russian winter defeated Napoleon and Hitler. When is poor planning ever an excuse for failure?
Conquests always bloodless. Almost no mention of the desperate resistance many peoples and nations put to the forceful spread of Islam in their lands. And the heavy casualties involved.
The brave janissaries were the elite troops faithful only to the Sultan. True. But do you know what they did in the Balkans? There's a good reason they were the most feared of all ruthless killers.
Islamic architecture dwarfed European construction in perfection. What happened to the St. Sofia cathedral (now mosque) in Constantinople (now Istanbul)?
Europeans learned the use of paper from Muslims. Maybe. But the Muslims learned it from the Chinese.
Muslims practiced cataract surgery first. Not true. The Romans did too, way before that.
When Muslims finally took Constantinople, they apparently did nothing to the people there. Given how the film revels in the well-known account of the Crusaders wading in blood up to their horse's knees upon their sack of Jerusalem, the omission of the bloody fate of Constantinople is curious.

And this is just on casual first viewing. I have not even made an attempt to collect all the omissions and implied inaccuracies. The film is about as unbiased as a history of Christianity that "forgot" to mention either the Crusades or the Inquisition, arguably the most embarrassing, cruel, and shameful episodes in the history of that religion.

To add insult to injury, the film revels in pointless historical gossip instead of important events. Why, in the world, would we care about Suleyman's poetry that the guy wrote after having his own son murdered at the instigation of another wife? Are we supposed to sympathize with the loneliness of the absolute ruler? Please! And maybe he did best Solomon with buildings but I don't think Suleyman came close to doing it with the number of wives and concubines. Not that he did not try very hard.

The harem sequence is also laughable. We are supposed to think that stocking women was not just for the pleasure of the ruler. Islam allows him only four wives (the poor thing) and an unspecified number of concubines. However, the worthy "consultants" are at pains to tell us that the sultan did not just waltz in and pick one for dinner. No! You see, his mother could raise objections! Boo-hoo. I am all in tears. How said mother could do this from the women's quarters given that those were separated from the palace would remain a mystery. And the "consultants" don't stop there. They have the ridiculous temerity to claim that these women were in a position of power! That all their so-called power derived from the good will of the Sultan seems to escape them. Well, the film does show a lot of women in burkhas, so one may draw own conclusions about their empowerment.

If you believe the film, Islam is an engine for perpetual growth and progress. But the film ends with the death of Suleyman Nothing about the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the ossification of dogma, the stifling of all creativity, the increasing cruelty toward subjects in the Balkans, the inefficiency of the famed bureaucracy, the corruption of officials, all leading inevitably to the liberation of the conquered subjects, and the fall of the Empire in the First World War. There was a century (19th), when the Ottoman Empire was known as the "sick man of Europe." Turkey is now a secular state (who knows for how long) and the faith seems to inspire far more destructive radicalism than anything else.

This is not to say that Islam is somehow a bad religion as far as religions go. This is to say that it was just as susceptible to manipulation and distortion like all the rest. That ambitious people could use it to further their own ends. That it could inspire both arts and slaughter. Religion is what people make of it. And people invariably "go astray" and the early promise of each religion turns into a spiritual and, regrettably often, physical yoke.

August 10, 2003